Marian's Blog

Italy can do better than deeply sexist Berlusconi

There are lots of things I admire and love about my other home, Italia. Overall though, the public status of women is not one of them. I haven't yet heard how the voting is going today and tomorrow but I do keep thinking of so many reasons why Silvio Berlusconi does not deserve a third term as prime minister. One need go no further than his attitudes and behaviour toward women, as outlined in Stephen Brown's recent Reuters article, "Berlusconi's sexism chafes as Italian vote looms." Chafe indeed. Here's a man in his 70s who always wears a dark wig and has undergone one or more cosmetic surgeries (facelifts) - in his constant attempt to make himself seem "younger" and (in Black American parlance) to pull women. He's married, by the way.

Brown quotes Berlusconi recently on the campaign trail, "The left has no taste, not even when it comes to women. ... As for our (women candidates) being more beautiful, I say that because in parliament they have no competition."

About Berlusconi, Brown writes: "His women supporters laughed when he called them the "menopause section" at a recent rally and urged them to bake cakes for campaigners [i.e., the candidates, who are vastly male]. His long-suffering wife Veronica, 20 years his junior, got her revenge last year by reprimanding him for lechery in an open letter to a left-leaning newspaper. He publicly apologized."

Exactly what type of leadership does someone with such an outlook offer Italy for the 21st century? Do we really want more of the same: the future turning to the past that is doomed to fail? Italy is an incredible society that deserves and needs to create a new national script; a switch from the 'national political theatre' of the past now grown very, very stale.

Two days after the Brown article, Deepa Babington's came out in Reuters, "Italian women fight to break political barriers." She quotes candidate Marianna Madia ("adopted" daughter of Berlusconi's Democratic Party rival and former mayor of Rome, Walter Veltroni). Madia is "a 27-year old economist running for the rival Democratic Party in the parliamentary election": "Every now and then, I sometimes feel we in Italy live in pre-historic times."

The article cites the Inter-Parliamentary Union ranking Italia 67th in the world for the number of women elected to parliament. Italy can do better.

Italia back to the polls: it's Veltroni or the other guy, again

Not being there, I feel I'm missing out as Italia prepares to vote - again - on tomorrow and Monday. (Can't the U.S. take the hint about weekend elections?) Italy's current election situation seems sooo eerily deja-vu, like we've been here before, which, in a very real sense, we have, and like it hasn't been that long ago, which it has not. Sunday's choices for prime minister are Walter Veltroni of the Partito Democratico, and a resort to the immediate past in the form of already two-time former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi (a billionaire also known as Italy's third-richest man and formerly the richest). Last fall Berlusconi morphed his Forza Italia party (named for the football - soccer - club he owns) into a new political party called Popolo della Liberta or the "People of Freedom" party. Back in January 1994 in her short essay, "Recent Italian Politics", in Z magazine, writer Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio described Berlusconi's first term as PM:   

"... the new government is in the hands of a person who came into politics only about a year ago, leads a party named after the national soccer league, and has more experience in manipulating the media than in being prime minister. The result is a situation in which, if you are a woman in politics, you need to either declare war to abortion or be a dictators' daughter to get in the news; the "family" is back under the supervision of a Catholic ministry; and the space for open discussion on cultural diversity has been dramatically reduced.

The bold section is marked by yours truly. That reference to a "dictator['s] daughter" probably is about politician and self-declared fascist Alessandra Mussolini, who is Il Duce Benito Mussolini's granddaughter and film diva Sophia Loren's niece. I'm still learning what really goes on politically in my 'other home' though I am not looking forward to another Berlusconi term in office in order to find out.

Food: from fuel to riots as Reuters covers agflation

The current global food crisis makes me remember being in Jamaica in the last quarter of 1977. Michael Manley was prime minister. For some reason, the U.S. government did not consider Mr. Manley a friend. Somehow I sensed that perhaps it was more than coincidence that the same tense political period between Washington and Kingston witnessed empty shelves in all of Kingston's local food shops. This is no exaggeration. There was no rice and no beans ("peas" in the Caribbean). It's painful to remember, particularly in contrast to my eventual return to the States and walking into a supermarket as though it were the first time. I experienced culture shock. In fact, I wept as I saw aisle after aisle of so many brands of the same products, and much of it junk. Literally nothing to buy on grocery shelves a few short miles away in Jamaica, and row after row of food and junk on U.S. shelves. More often than not the items on the American shelves consisted of something manufactured for human consumption; so much of it in a category we've been conditioned to call "snack" foods. Fast forward to now. I'm not sure if Reuters coined the term "agflation" but they use it in this article on the soaring costs around the globe for people to feed their families and communities. This week in Haiti it was food riots and looting that resulted in several deaths. At the beginning of this year it was tortilla riots in Mexico, and last fall, some of India's poorest protested middlemen's alleged stockpiling for profit of food designated to help feed the most hungry. Amid so many concerns around food and agriculture politics globally and in the U.S., the American public needs to pressure Congress and federal and state governments to re-consider the idea of further converting land and crops used for food to the expansion of biofuel. A related matter is the fact that it's far cheaper and more efficient for people themselves to eat grain rather than raise large animals (beef livestock, for example), feed them enormous quantities of grain, and then slaughter these animals in order for people to eventually eat them. In most U.S. households for 30 years or so, the idea of the practicality of vegetarianism caused little more than a casual or bemused stir (or maybe an argument) over lunch or dinner. Today, however, with heightening contradictions of food, fuel and other costs vs. survival, this discussion hopefully will take on new life and new meaning.

India-Africa Summit in Delhi: Hard questions?

April 8-9 mark the first-ever India-Africa Forum Summit. Might the Summit include any component addressing human trafficking and undocumented (i.e., illegal) immigration coming from the Asian subcontinent into East and Southern Africa?? India and the African Union each has its own summit website. From India's website:

"India and Africa have a historic relationship and this has grown into a sustainable partnership. From our struggle against colonialism and apartheid, we have emerged to jointly accept the challenges of a globalising world. Whether we have to deal with threats to international peace and security, the threat from international terrorism or the scourge of poverty, we believe that India and Africa traverse the same path, share the same values and cherish the same dreams." 

The AU's description seems decidedly less sentimental: "The Africa-India Forum Summit is intended to consider the modalities to strengthen the cooperation ties between the two partners in the areas of Economic; Political; Science, Technology, Research and Development; Social Development and Capacity Building; Tourism; Infrastructure, Energy and Environment and Media and Communication. The Africa – India Forum Summit aims also at adopting harmonized and comprehensive framework to reinforce the regional cooperation in a wide rage of fields as support to the already existing bilateral cooperation between African countries and India. The Forum would also be an occasion for the sharing and exchange of good practices in harnessing resources from the Diaspora."

"Harnessing resources from the Diaspora." The African Union wants to learn from Indians how to "tap into" its diaspora. Would the diaspora targetted for harnessing be the new one of the past 20-40 years or the far older and much larger one which was expelled and sold away to foreign lands during the slave trades? Thinking of the "historic relationship" between South Asia and Africa (including India before the Partition), it would seem far more logical, not to mention just, that Africa and India (and now Pakistan) would begin by collaborating to do something for the immediate and long-term benefit of the Siddi or Sheedi people and other African-Descendant populations in Asia and South Asia, and in India and Pakistan in particular, whose presence in Asia was created by and who survived the Indian Ocean Slave Trade.

March Madness? Bombing, from Belgrade to Baghdad

It's just days after the "Ides of March" - the date when the emperor Giulio Cesare was assassinated in Rome. In English we call him Julius Caesar. In English we also have a saying about March, that it "comes in like a lion," and "goes out like a lamb." We also talk casually about something called "March madness." Does anyone know where that started? I don't know its origin but looking at U.S. foreign policy in the past nine years the idea of "madness" in March seems worth another look. I was part of a group at the Salzburg Seminar in Austria in March 1999, when on the first or second evening we got word that the NATO bombing of Belgrade had begun. Four years later and it was Baghdad. Is there method to madness in March?

Spitzer official misconduct could make way for David Paterson?

I'm guessing that New York politico turned radio host Chris Owens has just had his story of the week - of the year - handed to him for his new show Black Politics w/ Chris Owens. And Eliot Spitzer effectively may have just handed New York State's governorship to Lieutenant Gov. David Paterson. I saw Mr. Paterson at the DNC's Fall meeting in Virginia. Most of us who might be at all interested (in the current gov's self-inflicted wounds) are now hearing plenty of news on Mr. Spitzer's amazingly self-destructive (and maybe addictive) hiring of a... sex worker ... while on a visit to Washington, DC. And on Valentine's Eve no less. Media are reporting Spitzer was a regular customer of a prostitution ring whose scope is international. Some of our thoughts go to Silda Wall who happens to be Spitzer's wife. This stunning, sad -and illegal - fiasco has layers enough to rival Shakespeare. Sorry to say, in some ways it all feels like driving past a crash. Unlike an accident, in this case there seems little constructive that observers can do. Today New York Times is calling on Spitzer to step down. Just goes to show, when it comes to some types of 'guy behaviour', 2008 is not 1968; it's not even 1998.

Castro, Cuba, the Americas: next door, yet so far away

From Cuba this week, at age 81, Fidel Castro announced his retirement. As a child in the late 50s, early 60s, I remember the feeling if not every political detail, of the way Cuba's "surprise" revolution shifted forever the power relationship between one tiny Caribbean island nation and the United States. What probably stands out most is remnants of the terrible sense of dread during the so-called Cuban missile crisis. In school back then we had regular "civil defense" drills. In my safe and pleasant all-Black elementary school we watched film clips of white children climbing under and croutching beneath their school desks. Now forty, fifty years later I ponder all those decades, the years and lifetimes (including my own) of so much missed opportunity for us, the people of the Americas to know each other. Most of us hardly do, if at all. This is especially true from the side of the people of the United States whose gaze in the 20th century, and now continuing into the 21st, only briefly and rarely focused on our region and our 'cousins' (particularly for Black and Native people) who are our neighbors. We particularly and very deliberately ignore Cuba. The ninety miles from there to Miami feels more like nine-thousand. The official U.S. political playbook says Fidel Castro - and by extension all of Cuba - is 'off limits' and to be villified. Yet unlike many Americans, Cubans are able to access education, literacy and health care beyond what the people of the U.S. are led to expect as achievable for a nation of Cuba's size and history. And what of Afro Cubans? What was their lot in Cuban history, and their status since 1960?

Burma's Saffron Revolution: Violent crackdown on day 10

The violent crackdown everyone dreaded is on in Burma. International press are reporting one Japanese man is dead after being shot today by soldiers. This now brings Japan (also a Buddhist country) into the picture. The military controls Internet service within Myanmar and are blocking access to certain blogs, but word is getting out anyway. Several deaths have now been reported. Are the attacks on Buddhist monks, nuns and civilians the beginning of the end of Burma military rule? Where is India's voice? In a muted response China is now telling Burmese authorities to show "restraint". Thailand claims nothing unusual is going on. What about Europe, and Germany in particular? India and Germany both are said to have commercial ties to the Myanmar regime. U.S.-based Chronicle of Higher Ed links to New Mandala academic group blog which has lots of info and in turn links to Burmese site Kachin News Group in English and Burmese. There's also the link to Awzar Thi's Rule of Lords blog with compelling photos of what's now called the Saffron Revolution. Representatives of the people's movement say their non-violent protests are no fluke and the people will not give up. 

On Racism & Fascism: Stan Goff's article at Alternet.org

Finished reading retired soldier Stan Goff's article which asks if the U.S. is becoming fascist. It's quite detailed. He even writes about the U.S. military recruiting, inadvertently or otherwise, straight-up white supremacist racists. Goff concludes: "They are not Arabs who are painting Aryan Nations graffiti on the shattered walls of Baghdad." Can you imagine?? Along with everything else Iraqi people have been forced to go through and to subject themselves to, to endure. Goff's last line made me recall a local train ride from Sisak to Zagreb, in Croatia. One afternoon I noticed something written on the gray stone wall at one station where the train always stops along the way. Unusually, what I saw not only was written in large, bold letters, but in perfect English. It caught me by surprise. It was the "N" word. In the middle of Croatia.

Right after, I wrote an official report to the international human rights mission in which I worked. No one ever responded. Two weeks later I again rode the train. Someone had painted over the N word. This was a relief and I'm glad someone did. And yet even that doesn't alter the fact the word had been there, and that I and many others witnessed it. That someone had thought about this, then gone and very deliberately taken paint and written this foreign word - the "N" word - in huge letters on a gray stone public wall facing every passing train. And they'd written it in perfect English.

Someday I shall remember which station it was, in which community. I wondered then and still it comes back. Who wrote it, and why? I was the only Black person for miles around. I never saw another Black person in that area, nor on the Sisak-Zaghreb train. Why that particular spot? Had someone written it for me to see? Was it written because of me? I'll never really know.

Britain reports plot to blow up transatlantic flights from London

BBC and other media are reporting an alleged terror plot to blow up planes on transatlantic flights out of London. In the UK more than 20 persons have been arrested with searches continuing. Three U.S. airlines are said to have been targeted: United, Continental and American. London's Heathrow Airport appears virtually closed for the time being, with an international 'knock-on' or domino effect. UK authorities advise travelers to stay away from Heathrow as much as possible today. At present no hand luggage or liquids may be carried onto UK flights. Exceedingly long queues are reported along with flight cancellations and/or serious delays. A steady stream of news conferences is occurring in London, Washington and elsewhere.

Kenya: Lucy Yinda's Wema Centre for street children and community orphans

In 14 Million Dreams, Miles Roston's documentary film about Africa's millions of children orphaned by HIV and AIDS, Ms. Lucy Yinda describes how she started the Wema Centre for the rehabilitation of street children and community orphans. I can never forget the children I've seen, in Africa, in the U.S., the Caribbean, South America, the Balkans: children sniffing glue to numb hunger pain, refugee mothers with babies, smiling or anxious dirty-faced children in rags running through traffic at intersections, sometimes carrying a smaller child, begging passing drivers for change. I will never understand how anyone can take advantage of another person in such conditions. Please give Wema Centre your financial, political and spiritual support!

War and Collateral Civilians: Ethiopian women trafficked and trapped in Lebanon

The Blogher 2006 conference is happening in about a week. Meanwhile over at Blogher.org I posted my concerns about the least visible of the "collateral civilians" caught in the bombing of Lebanon and Hezbollah. Look here under "Race & Ethnicity."

World Cup: Italy 2, Deutschland 0, tied with an azzurro-blue bow!

Well, folks, it was wine over beer in Germany last night! Roger Cohen's Herald Trib piece nicely summarises what went down as Italia came through with back-to-back goals in overtime! Everybody was shocked - including Fabio Grosso - as he made that first score. Over by Circo Massimo in downtown Roma they were dancing in the street late into the night. Grazie, Deutschland, for the 2006 hospitality and a hard-fought game!

World Cup: Italia advances 1-0 over Australia

Italia's Francesco Totti put it away today at the World Cup. It may as well have been a photo-finish since for 94 minutes (and thus into overtime) neither team scored. Then, an Aussie stumble and some fancy Italian footwork handed Italia the chance for a penalty goal. In the 95th minute Italia WINS on Francesco Totti's penalty kick. He came all the way back from a badly broken leg in 2005 to his first-ever World Cup goal today on the penalty. They must already be in the streets and will be partying tonight in Roma and across Italia. Bravo Francesco, bravo Italia! Just one tiny thing: Was it me or did I really see Totti stick his thumb in his mouth as he celebrated his goal?? Anyway... thanks, Australia, for a game well-played.

Iraq: Civil war and Nir Rosen's Green Bird; long live Zarqawi?

Thursday, 8 June 2006. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi no longer walks the earth and CNN has interviewed a 'less well-known' (to some of us) freelance journalist called Nir Rosen. Today Rosen became the first person I've heard in the mainstream media (MSM) to speak openly, and like he were making sense, about Iraq being in a state of civil war. Digest that. Most other media folk are still using that "sectarian violence" euphemism. This includes Wolf Blitzer who thankfully, unlike many of his CNN colleagues, I am not forced to endure or imagine discussing "Brangelina" with a straight face. Besides Nir Rosen has anyone in US mainstream media officially called the current state of Iraq a civil war? Rosen specifically says it's been a civil war since 2005. He is also author of a book I'd never heard of before today - In the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq - briefly reviewed here. The book's subtitle seems appropriate on this day when some in "the West" are cheering and instant-replaying news of al-Zarqawi's death. May he, like all of us, have an opportunity to talk to G*d about who he was and the acts he committed in this life.

Somalia - Peaceful protesters tell Islamic fighters: "Leave Mogadishu"

The Guardian reports "hundreds of protesters" (we also hear it was thousands) marched the streets of Mogadishu today asking self-styled Islamic sharia court militias to leave town peacefully. On the U.S. diplomatic side, a (San Jose) Mercury News article today reports former State Department official Princeton Lyman is advising the Bush administration to "begin working urgently with regional governments and Somaliland, an unrecognized self-declared independent nation in northern Somalia, to contain Islamist militias." That quote is from the paper, not directly from Lyman. And I added the emphasis. We hope "official Washington" 1) will not bring any more of its "shock and awe" into traumatised Somalia; and 2) that it also will not simply turn its back. I will try adding a link for info on Somaliland - a region once colonised by Britain. This is also where I first drank camel's milk, and I must say: not bad! My prayers are with all of our colleagues and friends.

Haditha: Reports Marines will face trial; investigation of possible cover-up

In a news article dated Wednesday, 31 May, the Independent (of London) writes that according to the BBC, "American soldiers would stand trial" in last November's killings of unarmed Iraqi civilians in Haditha, Iraq. The article adds there's an investigation about whether there may have been a cover-up by senior officers. Oliver Duff and Jerome Taylor reported for the Independent.

Kenya: An "Old Etonian" accused of killing not once but twice

Some say certain people's claims to being African are not taken seriously. And I might ask, not taken seriously by whom? Perhaps not wholly by themselves? Then there's the strange Kenya case of Thomas "Tom" Cholmondeley (possibly pronounced "chum-lee"?), accused yet again (and pleading not guilty) of a recent murder. I was surfing the net for info on contemporary African-Caribbean Cholmondeleys when I stumbled on this latest news story. Thoroughly appalling. The headline seemed so outlandish that I checked the allegation in two or three places, just to verify I was not reading something from 2005. I was not. In 2005 other charges against this Tom were dropped in the separate shooting death of a Kenya Wildlife Service warden.

Tom's an aristocrat, though possibly without the bearing. He seems to have a nasty streak of 'bad luck'. Or maybe just a nasty streak. His family happens to "own" approximately sixty-five to one hundred thousand (65,000-100,000) acres of Kenya. And he's Kenyan. And white.

Neither killing allegedly committed by the above-mentioned occurred in the parking lot of the type of Naivasha or Nairobi club as is frequented by persons of Tom's particular (Kenyan) background. To look at this from one angle it would seem Tom's 'claims to fame' are 1) social and 2) material. Or perhaps the order should be reversed. You need to read the articles linked below to begin to grasp the depths to which Tom's mostly poor yet (hopefully) equally Kenyan neighbours despise him. They say they find him "arrogant". How shocking. (snicker) All of which is very sad and once upon a time might have been avoided, possibly had Tom ever had a personality transplant. But I digress. A couple of the articles I've seen on the latest shooting include Barack Muluka's biting commentary in The East African Standard (Nairobi) in which he declares: "We live in a white man's world" (no date Sat, 13 May, sorry), and (London) Observer writer Tracy McVeigh's 14 May piece, also from Nairobi: "Protests grow at Kenya killing." [I thought the previous title looked a bit long!] It's the mainly British western press that's alluded to Tom's studies at Eton and to him as "an expat". I thought he was Kenyan.

The alleged killer's full name is "(Honorable) Thomas Patrick Gilbert Cholmondeley", born 1968 (he is not 46 as some have reported). He possesses British peerage #68401, as listed here and is the son of the 5th Baron Delamere - who (for reasons possibly only fully comprehensible and interesting to Brits/Europeans and a few in the ex-colonies) also is known as Lord Delamere (as his ancestor in that book Out of Africa). These titles are not Kenyan. The social core of Tom's existence (and political clout) seems to derive almost entirely from this British/European peerage system that seeped into Kenyan life along with the larger, now post-colonial problem (if I may go there) for Africa, of "who gets the land?" In many social circles not limited to any single continent or region, being African does not "cut" the social "mustard". Europe, the USA and Latin America all come to mind. Oh -and Asia and the Middle East. That rule-of-thumb, however, does not usually apply to Tom's type of African. And being in firm possession of a country-sized slice of Africa is handy on the material side of this social equation. I doubt that in the past hundred years it was possible for a "new" family to acquire one-hundred thousand acres of Scotland, England or Wales. I don't think even northern Ireland. But East Africa, yes.

Back to Kenya, where breadwinners from two families are dead in a similar fashion and allegedly by the same hand. This reflects an almost incomprehensible contempt for human life, in particular for the lives and families of the dead Kenyans. This whole scandal also does much to exacerbate and nothing to help resolve Kenya's piece of East Africa's lingering post-colonial land-tenure problem. I know you didn't think that was limited only to Zimbabwe...

I've already 'blabbed' too much. If convicted, British-hereditary-peerage-aristocrat African scion Thomas Cholmondeley could face Kenya's death penalty. Depending on the winds in Nairobi, maybe, maybe not.

Some say certain people's claims to being African are not taken seriously. And I might ask, not taken seriously by whom? Perhaps not wholly by themselves? Then there's the strange Kenya case of Thomas "Tom" Cholmondeley (possibly pronounced "chum-lee"?), accused yet again (and pleading not guilty) of a recent murder. I was surfing the net for info on contemporary African-Caribbean Cholmondeleys when I stumbled on this latest news story. Thoroughly appalling. The headline seemed so outlandish that I checked the allegation in two or three places, just to verify I was not reading something from 2005. I was not. In 2005 other charges against this Tom were dropped in the separate shooting death of a Kenya Wildlife Service warden.

Tom's an aristocrat, though possibly without the bearing. He seems to have a nasty streak of 'bad luck'. Or maybe just a nasty streak. His family happens to "own" approximately sixty-five to one hundred thousand (65,000-100,000) acres of Kenya. And he's Kenyan. And white.

Neither killing allegedly committed by the above-mentioned occurred in the parking lot of the type of Naivasha or Nairobi club as is frequented by persons of Tom's particular (Kenyan) background. To look at this from one angle it would seem Tom's 'claims to fame' are 1) social and 2) material. Or perhaps the order should be reversed. You need to read the articles linked below to begin to grasp the depths to which Tom's mostly poor yet (hopefully) equally Kenyan neighbours despise him. They say they find him "arrogant". How shocking. (snicker) All of which is very sad and once upon a time might have been avoided, possibly had Tom ever had a personality transplant. But I digress. A couple of the articles I've seen on the latest shooting include Barack Muluka's biting commentary in The East African Standard (Nairobi) in which he declares: "We live in a white man's world" (no date Sat, 13 May, sorry), and (London) Observer writer Tracy McVeigh's 14 May piece, also from Nairobi: "Protests grow at Kenya killing." [I thought the previous title looked a bit long!] It's the mainly British western press that's alluded to Tom's studies at Eton and to him as "an expat". I thought he was Kenyan.

The alleged killer's full name is "(Honorable) Thomas Patrick Gilbert Cholmondeley", born 1968 (he is not 46 as some have reported). He possesses British peerage #68401, as listed here and is the son of the 5th Baron Delamere - who (for reasons possibly only fully comprehensible and interesting to Brits/Europeans and a few in the ex-colonies) also is known as Lord Delamere (as his ancestor in that book Out of Africa). These titles are not Kenyan. The social core of Tom's existence (and political clout) seems to derive almost entirely from this British/European peerage system that seeped into Kenyan life along with the larger, now post-colonial problem (if I may go there) for Africa, of "who gets the land?" In many social circles not limited to any single continent or region, being African does not "cut" the social "mustard". Europe, the USA and Latin America all come to mind. Oh -and Asia and the Middle East. That rule-of-thumb, however, does not usually apply to Tom's type of African. And being in firm possession of a country-sized slice of Africa is handy on the material side of this social equation. I doubt that in the past hundred years it was possible for a "new" family to acquire one-hundred thousand acres of Scotland, England or Wales. I don't think even northern Ireland. But East Africa, yes.

Back to Kenya, where breadwinners from two families are dead in a similar fashion and allegedly by the same hand. This reflects an almost incomprehensible contempt for human life, in particular for the lives and families of the dead Kenyans. This whole scandal also does much to exacerbate and nothing to help resolve Kenya's piece of East Africa's lingering post-colonial land-tenure problem. I know you didn't think that was limited only to Zimbabwe...

I've already 'blabbed' too much. If convicted, British-hereditary-peerage-aristocrat African scion Thomas Cholmondeley could face Kenya's death penalty. Depending on the winds in Nairobi, maybe, maybe not.

Ayan Hirsi Ali: Coming to the US and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI)

Quick. Put your thinking cap on... This is not Eddie Murphy's movie about a continental African coming to the USA. And what's the message here: if you can't persuade more indigenous US Blacks to 'go conservative' then import them? As with so many other issues and events involving the US or touching it yet rarely reported to or discussed with average US citizens, this news has potential to influence other issues. Yet much of mainstream US media probably won't report this, let alone examine what it means, until later. If ever. In Europe the news is that Somali-born women's rights activist and member of Dutch parliament, Ayan Hirsi Ali, is "renouncing" life in the Netherlands to come to the US. Ali wrote the script for the tinderbox short Submission, filmed by Dutch filmmmaker Theo van Gogh (yes, a relative of the painter) who was murdered two months later in November 2004 by a man seeking revenge against the film's message. Since then Hirsi Ali has been under heavy guard. In recent days it surfaced that apparently she lied about herself and her eligibility to seek and gain refugee status in the Netherlands when she arrived there in 1992. According to Ali and the Wikipedia article about her (linked at her name), from September 2006 she'll be in the employ of the conservative American Enterprise Institute. Dio mio. Sounds like the outline of yet another film.

Fishing - Highlight of Bush presidency since 2001

Everybody's blogging this because it's so incredible.

George Bush says his best moment since becoming president of the US was catching a fish. The fishing took place at his private lake in Texas. He told this to Bild am Sonntag - a German paper, adding that his fish was a 7-1/2 lb perch.

What can anyone add to something like that? 

European Social Forum kicks off in Athens (Greece, not Georgia)

The Athens ESF started today in Hellas. That's Greek to me for Greece. (Corny!) The Moscow Times has an interesting headline, "The Left Goes to Athens", over Boris Kagarlitsky's article. The last ESF was fall 2004 in London, and the one before that was November 2003 in France in Paris/Saint Denis, and the first was November 2002 in Firenze (Florence), Italia. This is not to be confused with the 2001 G8 summit in Genova, Italy, where sadly Carlo Giuliani was killed.

Hi tech?! Enough already

Cheese and crackers! Between one thing and another we've been offline... how long? Bummer. Darn cookies and computers... Anyway, we're back. It's Easter weekend already. Good Friday. Passover began yesterday and continues till Thurs the 20th. Rummie is still US defense secretary (for the moment); Euro Social Forum kicks off in Athens in May - including Women's Assembly. Sudan's DC embassy proclaims its displeasure over an annoying (to them) yet growing snowball of divestment. Chad just cut dip. relations with Khartoum while CNN's US domestic service says nothing about most of this instead reporting the disturbing news of a New York shopkeeper whose cat may be trapped forever inside a wall. I kid you not. Plus ca change plus c'est toujours news American style. The more things change the more it's still news American style! Peace.

Kenya's Mombasa Road: That deadly road

If you've never driven long distances in Africa (Greece, too, for that matter), please read on. I just ran into a woman friend who, like myself, has driven the full length of Kenya's Mombasa Road (also known as the Nairobi-Mombasa Highway) - the only road which links Nairobi with the country's Indian Ocean coast. And if reason wins out over any fleeting thirst I might get for adventure, I seriously doubt I'll ever drive that road again in this lifetime. As a matter of fact I came across a little piece online in The East African Standard newspaper from Nairobi for 9 Feb 2006 which says "they" are now busy 'repairing' Mombasa Road. The review of progress so far was hardly enthusiastic. Done right, this project really would take months, if not a year or more. I don't need to convince anyone that I love - and care greatly about - Kenya. At the same time let's be honest. There are women and men across the world who know as well as I do of the terrifying dangers which lie in wait for anyone who dares drive the only road between Kenya's capital and its coast. Above all, and in the name of everything holy - do not drive this road at night. For great stretches there are no road lamps (translation = street lights). Along the road local folk warned us that bandits organise their "activities" on the road using cellphones to alert each other of the approach of likely vehicles. There was a major problem finding stations selling unleaded petrol (gasoline). Yet to me perhaps the worst and scariest thing is the 'shoulders' - or sides of this road - or rather what's left of them. So much of the roadbed has been allowed to erode for so long that in places along the way the drop-off of the sides of the highway can be nearly a foot (12 inches), maybe sometimes more. How many - whether Kenyans or tourists or other visitors - have been injured or killed when a tire accidentally left the jagged edge of the badly eroded road causing a driver to lose control of his or her car? That's a valid and very sobering question to ask. Then there are the drivers. Not all of them. To say the Mombasa Road has heavy commercial traffic would be a grave understatement. The truck traffic is crazy as just about every imaginable commodity is hauled overland between the coastal port and the shops, markets, homes and other businesses of the inland city. With a few prudent exceptions, most commercial drivers seem to have lost their (virtually all-male) minds. Thank God it was daylight. I was driving as we came through a rare, well-maintained stretch of the M-Road where it passes through Tsavo National Park. In the distance I watched as a gigantic lorry (truck) barreled over a hill and toward us from the opposite direction. As drivers often seem to be in that land, this one was in the grip of an obsession to overtake (pass) the car in front of him. At the rate he was hurling that truck down the road there was not enough time or distance between us for him to pass and then pull back into his lane. He was in mine and closing on us fast. In an instant there in the middle of the highway first I braked, then I slammed on the brakes and stopped completely as I realised I had to get our car off the road. Only by swerving off the highway did we avoid being crushed. To this day I wish I had the name of the company that maniac drove for. It was written on the truck but in that moment my full attention was on snatching our lives from the jaws of a highly probable and completely senseless roadway death. I love Kenya. I just wish someone in the national government would spend some of the treasury money to make that road safe, and for someone in the national tourism office and the Nairobi office of Transparency International to apply some much-needed pressure to improving the condition of this long, lethal highway. In the meantime if you plan a Kenya visit between the city and the coast - catch a plane. Do not drive the Mombasa Road.

European Journalism Centre gets new director

The Maastricht, Netherlands-based European Journalism Centre - the EJC - will get a new director from March 1st. Previous director Raymonde Griswold will be succeeded by a chap called Wilfried Rütten. Check other interesting info on their site.

"Captured Africans," Kevin Dalton Johnson's quayside work, Lancaster UK

'SWIM WITH SHARKS', originally uploaded by MarianDouglas.

Alasdair Pettinger's image of Johnson's sculpture somewhere near Lancaster's Millenium Bridge. The saying "to swim with sharks" began in the slave trade when sharks changed course to follow ships loaded with captured Africans, waiting for humans to jump or be thrown overboard. The permanent installation "Captured Africans" was conceived by Jamaican British artist Kevin Dalton Johnson who himself is a descendant of these kidnapped Africans. The section of his sculpture in this photo illustrates how in 17 years from 1745 to 1762 alone thirteen "slavers" (ships) sailing from Lancaster delivered almost 2,200 Africans into slavery and oblivion. We must add these numbers of people to all those trafficked through other UK ports and add those to the parallel Dutch, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Danish-Norwegian slave trades. Also the Arab slavers in the Indian Ocean trade in Africans.